The present invention relates to virtualized environments, and more specifically, to providing router-based maximum transmission unit and data frame (or packet) optimization in virtualized environments.
In virtualized environments, multiple software actors may share access to the same physical hardware. For example, a plurality of virtual machines may execute on a single physical host machine, sharing the physical resources provided by the host machine. One example of such a physical resource is a network interface device. As such, virtual machines executing on the host machine are each assigned one or more virtual network interface devices that manage network communications on behalf of the virtual machines and any corresponding software components executing therein. The hypervisor of the host machine orchestrates sharing of the physical network interface device by the virtual network interface device. In order for the hypervisor to send a data frame received from the virtual network interface devices out via the physical network interface device, the virtual network interface device must copy the frame to a trunk Ethernet device of the hypervisor. Doing so involves system calls to the hypervisor, and requires the processor of the host machine to change states, each of which are very inefficient, and reduce overall system performance.